Yet More

Two more scans peeps. Although this may be it for a while, Christmas and whatnot.


Greeting

Like the color on this but it makes my forehead look baldie. I'm not, I swear!


Grasping

Spooky zombie hand; what's not to like?

Speaking of holidaze - I still have to hang these super-cute ornaments. I think the wire hanger thingies are in the attic; I trip over boxes of christmas stuff all year and finally store them just in time to get them out again. Sigh.



And P. sent out Xmas cards with his trademark sticker and stamp artwork which I got to scan in.



Cat. Grass. Cute!



Can we say.... cute??

And now for something more surreal.. the burger tree series.







Mmmm.. trees with fruits and candies on them?! And treasures underneath!! And of course we have happy burgers and hot dogs and pizzas on top. Comfort food.. we love comfort food.



And then we have the subatomic nuclear destroyer tree. Don't try to think about it too hard. It hurts us, precious.

More

Did I say I was going to put my face in the scanner? Well, I did. I scanned my face, and then the side of my head. And immediately regretted it. The bright light in my eyes for seemingly an eternity - the vibrations - the vrrrrrrrr noise in my ear - mmm instant headache. And eye strain. Ooooo dunno if I will do it again, unless it's at a lower (and faster) resolution. Lots of pictures of people scanning their eyes on flickr - but it can't be good for them, right?


Oblique

I feel sort of blah about this one but salvaged a cool crop:


Brambles

Fun or what? Unfortunately these bitty crops can't be blown up or they show pixellization. I suppose if I did 10-minute long scans I could get super resolution - but oh yeah! Not so keen on holding my face on a vibrating scanner until the mountains fall into the sea. Not to mention the sweaty-palms fear that someone will walk in and see me with my face sandwiched into a machine.

So - thus begins the Landscape series - where I turn shots of my face into gritty sand and storm-blown vignettes.


Bonfire

Overprocessed? Maybe. I never said I was a pro!


Nightstorm

And we can't log off without showing the front scan, yes?


i-eye

Grotesque? There's a couple of eyeballs in there, if you feel like playing Where's Waldo.

Scan This

Christmas socks are almost done except for kitchening the last sock. I'm saving this for an especially brilliant mood since.. well since I can. Hat is not quite finished. I'm really, really tired of knitting it even though I love the yarn. It's gotten big enough to start sliding off of the needles so I've jammed point protectors on the ends. Which of course pop off at every given opportunity. If this is a funny size I am absolutely not ripping it back. If too small, I will try to block it bigger. If too big, I will maybe felt it a bit. I'm pretty clueless as to how to make sure things fit except to eyeball it and hope something magic happens. Hey, it works so well with.. scarves.

In other news, I have acquired a scanner. We have two already but they are shoved into a closet and god knows where the software or cables are. So we probably didn't need a third one, but free is a darn good price.

And, oh yeah? Scanners are fun.



Handy

This was my first and only try at this so far and I'm surprised at how well it came out. I just moved my hand around while it scanned. I was expecting clean clut slices but the boundaries are much more organic and variable than that. I also got some interesting crops from it.


Fingers


Pachyderm


At Your Finger Tips


Faultlines

I've even gone and given them names all pretentious-like, right? If you're especially unlucky, I'll put my face in.

Darn It

Yes, I really do have a hole in my sock.

It wasn't there when I washed it. I've worn the socks several times, but hardly every day. They've been sitting in my drawer, patiently awaiting winter and it was with great anticipation that I finally pulled them out and stretched them over my feet this year. (although whether the weather these past few months is 'winter' is highly debatable.)

They seemed to be holding up quite well except for a small amount of gruddiness on the soles of them. Well, they are socks, after all. The colors there seemed especially prone to fading.

However, after peeling them off recently, I noticed a huge honking hole in the toe. Do I have sharp toes?? My toenails are not needing attention. I can only guess that at some point in the past my nail must have had a sharp edge and done some preliminary damage.

So, this hole. It goes down six or eight rows. Several stitches across. It came out of nowhere and blew up fast. I have another ball of the same yarn that I had planned for another pair of socks someday; but it seems I will need to darn my socks. Forever, and ever and EVER.

Oh yeah, how the hell do you darn a sock?

I knew this sock yarn was not the best for socks from the start. It is soft, and single ply, when sock yarn should be two or three ply, and firmly twisted, and the sock itself should be knit at a tight gauge. And it's even better to include some nylon, silk, or mohair in the toe and heel; and then you will have a sock that will last practically forever. As a matter of fact - here is an excellent post from FiberLife with more than you ever wanted to know about sock yarn and increasing it's durability.

My sock has none of these things. And I knew it. And I didn't care. I abso-had to have it - soft wool and bright magically pooling colors and it came with its own pattern. I resolved never to wear the socks with shoes or on walks - strictly in bed and around the house (which generally involves me sitting on the couch or in front of the computer with short jaunts to the fridge). I was being such a good sock steward. WHY GOD WHY.

In other news, I am officially tired of the Tiger hat. It has gotten big enough so that it doesn't fit comfortably on the double points; I searched for a circular I could move it to but my circular collection is muy small. Someday I may get one of those snap-together kits that you can make any size and length circular from. For now, the hat is crowded on the double points and progress is slow.

So I started another project. Naturally! And it's zipping right along in thicker yarn.



I've decided to make another pair of these:



out of the same Araucania Atacama alpaca yarn. Although the plies are prone to splitting the yarn is smooth and soft and a joy to work with. The colors are gorgeous, hand-dyed and each skein wildly different. I could never have predicted the blues and browns smashing together with bits of green and silken white. Oh yeah; did I say my needle collection was small? Is it possibly because all of my needles are jammed into 2000 projects in bags and purses around the house? Did I steal these needles from such a project? Yes!!

This gave me an excuse to head to the new A.C. Moore, land of aisles and aisles of yarn and home to Atacama yarn. Which I found hardly any of, bins nearly emptied.

It's on CLEARANCE.

WHY GOD WHY.

Actually, out of all of their yarn, this is pretty much the only stuff I like. It's virtually the only yarn that looks hand-made in any sense of the word; most everything else is plastic and spit out by machine. Even the wools are way too smooth for my taste. Boring, boring machine-made yarn! Boo!

As far as I can tell, the yarn is still being made. I did see a few vendors with it at Stitches. But I loaded up on it anyway. A few pink skeins for my own socks; yeah, someday a pair for me too. Alpaca for feet! Mmmm.

That's the trouble with yarn; here today, gone tomorrow. It's not totally paranoid to buy every skein in sight, is it? I do wish the yarn market behaved less like the fashion market; but I guess you wouldn't go to the fabric store and expect the same prints from year to year? I do so despise change; do we need 500 varieties of Oreo cookies and 100 calorie snack packs? I miss whatever cookies used to be on the shelves before all of the brand flattening.

Bring back alpaca yarn and variety!

Socknapping

Last night as I lay in bed counting sheep I heard a scuffle, a sort of dragging and then a clank.

Silence.

I rose and found a scene of murder most foul:



Not only was my poor sock dragged into the dirt, but also mutilated - stitches slit and threads dead!

But wait - this is a pair of socks! One is missing!

It's been - horrors! socknapped!


A clear case of Sockholm Syndrome

BlogThingy

Your Monster Profile

Death Strangler You Feast On: Grass You Lurk Around In: The Ocean You Especially Like to Torment: Groupies

What's Your Monster Name?

Death Strangler - how cute!

Mmmmmmmmmm

Okay, it's finally time to update my blog template, time to add Natasha's blog link (hiya!) and hmmm maybe some others. Erk, flickr is having burps so I can't do much more. Wahh.

Hmm I just noticed my first post was Nov. 7 of 2005 which means I've been blogging for over a year now. Am I the only one that thinks the word 'blogiversary' is kind of icky sounding somehow? I look back at the posts from a year ago: still haven't washed the rest of that Icelandic fleece (ick); I can't believe I was frogging all of those sweaters that are now hogging enormous space in my crafts room (hmm maybe I can felt them instead); I still need to graduate from Kool-Aid dyeing; I still need to use the alpaca fair isle pattern I devised. I may never spindle again; I need to finish 97 knitting projects that have been abandoned; pysanky-making will likely be restricted to easter-time; I still want to sell dyed rovings or handspun yarns on etsy. I learned what poison sumac looks like and I still (!) have red marks on my leg that may never go away. Oh yeah, I still don't have a job. Whoops.

Yeah, I'm getting pretty nervous about it. I just realized I have enough money for one more month than I thought; I can pay two more rents and not one. So December and January are covered. Phew! I've been keeping an eye on Craig's list; I'm sure I can get something but I really am holding out for something different. I'm so sick of office jobs and retail and customer service, which is 99.9999% of jobs around these parts. It would be nice to do something with my hands, something outdoors, something where I don't have to wear a big sack of a uniform and yah, I really want a boss that is supportive and not a sadist, yes I said it a sadist!

The story of my previous job in a nutshell: The boss made everyone's job a living hell for over 3 years. It took us a while to figure out what was going on. Everyone was always gossiping about everyone else, bickering about who was or wasn't doing their job, bickering about whose job it was to do such and such, on and on. In a customer-service situation one gets enough flak from the general public without your coworkers flakking out as well. Turns out that the boss (it so often turns out that the shit flows downhill, doesn't it?) was talking behind everyone's back and starting rumours the entire time. She also loved to hire people that weren't qualified or weren't 'team players'. There's really much more to it but (sigh) it's just not appropriate here. Finally everyone realized what the problem was and it became a game of cat and mouse; at least everyone knew their roles now when playing Who Moved My Cheese. It seems the manager was trying to tame the business owner somehow, constantly telling him what to do or not do; no one could ever believe if what she said was true or not; everyone agreed she was just trying to break the business and at last, she demanded that employees truck back and forth between the two offices, and work 6 days a week every other week, by themselves, which is basically the job of two people. This other office is probably 20-30 minutes from my house, not a big commute for most people, but I loathe driving and suck terribly at it, especially at 6:30-7 in the morning for god's sake in my broken-down little 1990 car. So Boss Lady knew I could never do it, and just wanted everyone to quit, after having fired half of the staff already. So I quit.

And then a week later..

the boss quits.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I gave my one week's notice, well I always give two weeks but then I would have had to work a week in the far office and that just wasn't feasible. The nurse quit. Then the business owner must have realized something was up. Not sure what finally put the fire under him, guess having 2 people fired for no real reason and 2 others quit got his attention? He passed out a survey to everyone, didn't say not to tell the manager. So she finds some that have been filled out, guess what. They are all about her. Big meeting, after I am gone already. Then she hands in her letter, really nasty one too from what we hear.

So the last remaining back office staffer calls in P.'s mom. She worked there previously and pulled me in to work originally. Then she was canned about 6 months ago for.. ehh who knows what. So now she is back in the game, at least for now. Thing is, it's not necessarily a fun job even without Bosszilla.

Aaaaahhhh, I miss the money but not the job. Here I am at home, with my coffee, my cat in my lap, it's 11:30, neighborhood is quiet. My time is my own. I can knit, clean, do laundry, play games, yah, I have high-speed internet and I use it to play text MUDs. Hah! So Ancient Anguish is a text MUD, fantasy gaming where you slaughter stuff and solve quests. I play a ranger so I can spend most of my time foraging for herbs and making clothing out of furry animals. Sounds barbaric, doesn't it? I guess it fulfills a fantasy of total self-sufficiency, I really don't even need money on the game. I can make my own admittedly crappy weapons and armour, but when you are killing skunks they suffice.

Blah blah blah, ok flickr is working so I can show you my hat. P's mom liked the green hat so much she commissioned one for her sister for Xmas.



from this yarn, I believe it's 'Tiger' colorway from Fleece Artist. I'm glad to have found a use for it, blue faced leicester is so soft and I'm betting it will be a crayzee hat. It's nice to have all this yarn around, nicer still to knit with my handspun and see how it works up. I think it makes good feedback, cause while the skeins can be very pretty, in theory, they will be used someday. And maybe, if I am satisfied with my progress, I can start sending them out into the world. Fly! Be free!

Boot Call

Single Wool/Silk Blend Sock Seeks Solemate

Me: Youthful, outgoing, embraces diversity. Works for medium-sized firm in important support position.

Prefers: Red wine, slow food, autumn, sunsets on the water, a soft touch.

Laissez-faire yet worldy. Loves adventure but also enjoys nesting. Not afraid to admit that the simple things in life and the finer things in life are often the same!

You: Same.

Together: We can knock the boots. Call me.

Oh Sock, How Do I Hate Thee?

I have lost all will to live knit.

Exhibit A:



One: mostly finished hand-knitted sock.

Next to: One rapidly shrinking ball of yarn, causing rapidly inflating doubts of yarn quantity sufficient for second sock.

Using my super-scientific method of weighing the yarn as I go, I find that the ball now weighs less than half of what it did to begin with. Which means, I lack the yarn necessary to finish this sock, and knit an entire second one. Mind that the ball isn't nearly as big as it appears in the photo.

Now I realize I was taking this risk when I started. I really haven't anyone to blame but myself. But I consoled myself with the thought that I could simply order another braid of roving from.. umm. Who the hell did I buy this from at Stitches anyway?? Crap. I now remember balancing my checkbook and tossing all of my receipts. Oi.

I went to the websites of the businesses that show up on my credit card statement. No luck. I've no record now of cash purchases. Phooey. Browsed through the Stitches brochure and pulled up names that seemed familiar, focusing in particular on the section of the vendor map where I seem to recall buying it. Forget it.

Now to the Fleece Artist website. I find that the colorway most resembling my roving/sliver/wooly stuff is 'Hercules'. Close enough. Now to find the silk wool sliver 65% wool, 35% silk.

The silk wool sliver on their website, and every website I can find that sells it, is 50% wool, 50% silk.

Ummm.. WHAT.

I thought about emailing them, but it seems kind of pointless. Clearly, this is a discontinued or obsolete version of the silk wool sliver, and unless I can figure out where I bought it from, and they still have some somehow..

I'm kind of ******.

I wouldn't have minded so much having the other sock be a slightly different colorway, or at this point, a completely different one. But the same colorway, in a different fiber?? Not sure that 15% would make a difference... well, ok, I am sure of it. Now I'm not certain how I feel about finishing the sock; it seems rather pointless. I guess if I ever break my leg I can wear it on my uncasted limb. Maybe I should take up skiing. (Does anyone know any amputees who would like a hand-knitted sock??)

Thinking about finishing it for crap's sake and nailing it to the wall as a monument to my colossal fiber hubris. Or maybe I'll be really brave, cut off most of the cuff, finish the second sock from that, and knit up an edging for the first sock. Casting off on the cuff? Icky.

Or maybe I'll clog the garbage disposal with it.

Draw This Turtle And Go To Art School

Couldn't hold out any longer and gave the green hat to P.'s mother after they took me on a spending spree for long-sleeved tees and thermal tops. She certainly seemed to like it because it went right on her head. I bet I will get some more hits if I write 'meathead' somewhere in every post.

Making good progress on the sock. Unlike the Yarn Harlot, I'm not quite up to whipping out A SOCK A FREAKING DAY. I suppose I could crank it out faster, but ribbing takes much longer for me. Pull the yarn to the front, pull it to the back. I have to take extra time because my ribbing tends to look like crap cuz I can't purl for a damn.



I'm also enjoying every stitch. I've never knit such smooth, silky yarn. It's not that I did such an awesome job spinning it but the material itself has a gorgeous luster. And of course I'm eagerly anticipating every color change. I kept the roving in one piece lengthwise when I split it, but I connected them willy-nilly while spinning so the color progression could go either way throughout the yarn.

I'm also anxious about the quantity. I weighed my other handknit socks and they are 1 3/4 ounces. This silky yarn ball also weighed.. 1 3/4 ounces. Very scientifically, that means I have just enough to make one sock and run out of yarn on the toe of the second. I forgot to count the yardage which is ok since I have no idea how many I would need. I'm going to make the cuff maybe an inch shorter on inch and pray to whatever yarn god there may be in fiber heaven.

Mmm now I could go for a whole sweater from this stuff. Not too economical since this ball cost $9. Waaaaah.

And I promise not to take a picture of every inch of progress. Unless I do.